Javascript using PHP functions

Ever wanted to use functions easily available in the PHP library but with Javascript?

I found a new project called the PHP-JS project and it's pretty cool. They have covered most of the PHP functions and written some really good Javascript. The other day I needed a snippet of Javascript code to Uppercase the first letters of new words, which is the ucwords() function in PHP. Here's their code:

function ucwords (str) {
    return (str + '').replace(/^([a-z])|\s+([a-z])/g, function ($1) {
        return $1.toUpperCase();
    });
}

So to use it I write:

//Capitalizes the words to 'The Cat Sat On The Mat'

alert( ucwords('the cat sat on the mat') );

Nice. Visit the site at http://www.phpjs.org/.

PHP array to Javascript array format

Just been messing around with ajax and a particular jQuery plugin... The easiest way to convert a PHP array to a Javascript array is to use the json_encode() function (PHP 5.2+).

<?php 

echo json_encode(array("One","Two","Three"));

?>

This will output the Javascript array notation:

["One","Two","Three"]

If I use an ordered map array like this:

<?php 

echo json_encode(array("1"=>"One","2"=>"Two","3"=>"Three"));

?>

It will convert it to a Javascript object:

{"1":"One","2":"Two","3":"Three"}

Bacteriophages and... introducing Virophages

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect/kill bacteria as part of their natural programming. Just like a typical viral infection may give you a sore throat, using a mechanism of infecting the cells in your throat by inserting RNA/DNA into your cells causing your body's immune system to fight back by killing the infected cells - bacteriophages infect bacteria and make them produce more of its viral clones and/or they end up killing the bacteria they infect.

We've known about bacteriophages for a long time and today we use them to insert genetically engineered fragments of DNA into cells so they start expressing the new genes. This is standard practice in genetics labs nowadays.

But up until 2 or 3 years ago we had not come across Virophages - a virus that infects another virus! How such a discovery managed to slip by silently without anyone making a big hoohah about it is crazy!

I'm only speculating that one application of gene therapy using virophages might be, and I haven't given this much thought, is to infect a genetically modified stalwart virus similar to HIV to continually produce a virus that carries a beneficial gene such as the CFTR-coding gene to help sufferers of systic fibrosis. You stick the infected virus into a human being and it starts creating the virus that carries the gene to cure the disease or at least to provide consistent and longer-lasting gene therapy.

The possibilities and applications of this discovery have great potential. Here's an article nature published a few days ago in which I first found out about virophages: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.188.html

As we're on the subject of microbes, I'd like to take the opportunity to publically complain about Leeds Central Library which has no books on bacteria in its catalogue! (unless they're hiding them somewhere!)